On April 3, 2010 Chambers Fine Art New York is pleased to announce the opening of Things: New Works by Guo Hongwei. Born in Chongqing in 1982, Guo Hongwei graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2005 and has lived and worked in Beijing since then. This will be his first solo exhibition in the United States.
Once he left art school, he soon abandoned the traditional approach that characterized the teaching at the Academy. Favoring subject matter drawn from his childhood and often working from photographs in his family photo-album, during the next three years he painted a series of works that were notable for their inventive handling of the medium. Seeking to disturb the slick surface of the oil paint, he diluted it with turpentine and splashed it with water in order to create unanticipated effects. Beginning earlier this year, however, after a period of seclusion in Chongqing, he began to focus on more purely formal concerns, creating an inventive form of still-life from objects that he found lying around in his studio. The familiar forms of tooth-brushes, rolls of toilet-paper, a battered chair or a paper cup are isolated in the center of pristine white canvases or sheets of paper and continue the autobiographical approach while abandoning particular references to his childhood and adolescence.
Contrasting with the oil paintings is a series of large-scale water colors based on family photographs but rendered mysterious by their significant scale and dramatic chiaroscuro.
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated catalog with introductory essay by John Tancock.
纽约前波画廊很荣幸于2010年4月1日起举办题为《东西——郭鸿蔚新作》的展览。该展览是继2009年8月在北京前波画廊为郭洪蔚成功举办个展后的一个延续。郭鸿蔚于1982年出生于重庆，2005年毕业于四川美术学院，之后便生活工作于北京。此次展览将是他在美国的首次个展。
郭鸿蔚从学校毕业后，很快放弃了学院派的传统工作方式，以家庭相册里那些老相片上，自己和家人的图像作为工作对象，开始沉溺于以童年记忆为主题的个人绘画史。此后的三年里，他创作了一系列独特的方式，显突出绘画介质的独特性。他力图消解绘画过程中留下的笔触，用松节油稀释画面，再泼上水。斑驳的效果是艺术家自己亦不能控制的偶然性的痕迹。这种效果令绘画中的形象远离真实，似乎只存在于记忆的缝隙里。2009年初，他回到家乡成都，并他开始重新思考，开始把目光集中于那些具有纯粹的形式感的主题。以极具智慧却又没有私人感情的方式去观察静物的躯壳，摆置和描绘那些躺在他工作室里却没有知觉的东西。在那些被搁置在画布或画纸上的，平凡的牙刷、卷筒纸、残破的课椅、一次性纸杯，被他从漠然的纯白背景中剥离了出来。在此次的纽约展览中，他仍继续探索自己身边的环境，关注的主题包括从《被艺术家吹出泡泡的泡泡糖》到《经典》中的装裱，在传统画框中的山水画。
郭洪蔚代表了新一代当代中国艺术家，不再像上一代艺术家那样仅仅关注于政治。他选择关注自己身边的环境，把注意力集中在他所选择的媒介上--不论是水彩画或是油画--从而为那些常常被忽略的物体带来令人惊叹的视觉效果。
随展览一同将出版郭鸿蔚新作的图录，图录中附唐冠科先生所著的引言。